Three guesses for a quarter...

Nope... Nope... Nope,.. Now you owe me a quarter pounder with cheese fatso.

This has been a test!

#test #tests #testing #zomg

Enlarge (credit: Getty | picture alliance )

Americans will again have an opportunity to receive free at-home COVID-19 rapid tests from the US government, with orders beginning next Monday, September 25, the Biden administration announced Wednesday.

Households will be eligible to receive four free rapid tests that will "detect the currently circulating COVID-19 variant," the Department of Health and Human Services said in an announcement. The tests, available next week via COVIDTests.gov and expected to start shipping on October 2, are meant to help Americans detect COVID-19 and keep from spreading it for the rest of the year—especially during holiday gatherings.

"At this point, our focus is getting through the holidays and making sure folks can take a test if they’re going to see Grandma for Thanksgiving ,” Dawn O’Connell, assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the HHS, told the Associated Press.

Enlarge / Neither of these test BMWs has a human in the driver's seat. (credit: BMW)

On a large empty slab of asphalt, two BMWs take off. They drive in figure eights and along an oval path separate from each other but nearly in tandem, like two ice skaters practicing the same routine on a piece of black ice before coming to a stop.

Neither of the cars has a driver. That's not that impressive; self-driving cars in testing environments shouldn't impress anyone at this point. Essentially the automaker tells the car to drive a route, and it does it. The important thing here is why these cars, outfitted with additional sensors, are driving along the same route again and again, each time depressing the accelerator the same amount and applying the exact amount of pressure on the brakes: They're testing hardware with the least amount of variables you can encounter outside of a lab.

A closer look at one of the instrumented BMWs. (credit: BMW)

"It's boring for human drivers," says BMW's project lead for driverless development, Philipp Ludwig. When a human is asked to perform the exact same task repeatedly, the quality of the work diminishes as they lose interest or become fatigued. For a computer-controlled car, it can do this all day. And it has done exactly that.

Enlarge / US President Joe Biden speaks to members of the media on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, Jan. 30, 2023. (credit: Getty | Chris Kleponis/Bloomberg )

President Joe Biden plans to end two national emergency declarations over the COVID-19 pandemic on May 11, which will trigger a restructuring of the federal response to the deadly coronavirus and will end most federal support for COVID-19 vaccinations, testing, and hospital care.

The plan was revealed in a statement to Congress opposing House Republicans' efforts to end the emergency declarations immediately.

“An abrupt end to the emergency declarations would create wide-ranging chaos and uncertainty throughout the health care system—for states, for hospitals and doctors’ offices, and, most importantly, for tens of millions of Americans,” the Office of Management and Budget wrote in a Statement of Administration Policy.

Enlarge / This frame grab from AFPTV video footage shows people queueing outside a fever clinic amid the Covid-19 pandemic in Beijing on December 14, 2022. (credit: Getty | YUXUAN ZHANG/AFPTV/AFP )

Amid what appears to be an explosive outbreak of COVID-19, China on Wednesday said it would no longer report asymptomatic cases because they've become "impossible" to track after an end to mandatory testing.

The now-voluntary testing policy is part of an abrupt pivot away from the country's strict zero-COVID policy that drew widespread protests in recent weeks.

After years of keeping SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks largely at bay with various restrictions, mandatory isolations, quarantines, lockdowns, and extensive testing, China last week significantly eased its unpopular policy. The State Council announced on December 7 that residents would no longer be required to undergo frequent PCR tests for COVID-19. It also dropped the requirement to use digital health passes—personal QR codes that tracked an individual's movements and COVID-19 test results—for access to buildings and public transportation. And for the first time during the pandemic, the government also allowed people with mild or asymptomatic infections to isolate at home rather than in centralized facilities, which residents often criticized for being unsanitary and overcrowded.

No really that just happened. I swear I saw that with my own two braincells. I made this community public. ANARCHY!!!!

#publicshare #cakes #testing #anarchy

Enlarge / A sign for a vaccine site stands in Staten Island on November 29, 2021, in New York City. (credit: Getty | Spence Platt )

With pandemic funding running out, the Biden administration is repurposing $10 billion to buy next-generation COVID-19 booster doses for the fall, as well as treatments, including the anti-viral Paxlovid and monoclonal antibodies.

The funding will be pilfered from federal programs that support COVID-19 test availability and domestic production, as well as stockpiles of essential resources, such as personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators. Funding for research on coronavirus vaccines and new treatments will also take a hit.

"These were incredibly painful decisions," White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha said in a press briefing Thursday.

This is another paragraph.

This is even more.

Značky: #Network, #testing, #administrative

Need a fake SMTP server for testing? Chadwan Pawar of PostBox Services suggests Mailhog . It's an open source SMTP server that captures all mail and gives you a visual dashboard showing you what was received. Much fancier than /dev/null (but that can come in handy sometimes, too).

Read more about it over on PostBoxServices and here's a link to the Mailhog project on Github .

Značky: #testing, #postboxservices, #Network, #mailhog, #smtp